First Amazon Sale

If you've never sold something on Amazon before then you and I are on the same page. Or at least we were until earlier this week. I've had a stack of textbooks and books just begging to be relocated out of my attic so I buckled down and created a seller's account. It was really easy! Enter some information, press about twenty buttons, and ta-da I was an Amazon seller. Pretty nifty and relatively painless. No selling off your first-born child to be welcomed into the world of online resale. 

I should have known that it was too easy, but I was on a to-do task completion high. I was entering books left and right, cool descriptions and online they went. I'm not trying to make a bunch of money off these books, some would be nice, so I just put the lowest number (relatively) on the listings. At the end of my box of books I was so excited I almost ripped into my bookshelf for some more fun. Luckily, I managed to contain my excitement and chose to remove myself from the escalating seller's-high situation. Not before posting one last item though, a brand new, unopened Spiderman 2 DVD. 

The lowest priced dvd was listed for $1.17 so I thought I'd be marketing savvy and list mine for $0.99. Pretty smart, huh? It's cheaper than a dollar, it'll sell easy. And quickly too, as evidence by the email I received not twenty minutes later. I sold something, my first real sale! I was ecstatic, then nerves clicked in. Now I had to ship it... badump...

Long story short, I shipped the DVD out this morning through USPS ($2.46, less than the Amazon quote of $2.89) and ran home to complete my seller duties of notifying my customer (MY customer) that the item was shipped. I then decided to take a look at my earnings, I knew it wouldn't be much but I still had my first sale. Couldn't knock me off this high! How wrong I was, I basically just paid Amazon to sell my item! Here's the breakdown:

In case you missed that, I just spend $2.46 to mail the item that will only reimburse me $2.03. Oops, I'm going to go ahead and chalk this one up to a learning curve and be more aware next time. Items under $5 just aren't worth the time for me. Unless someone else knows how to cut these corners, because I surely looked the fool in this situation. I still have the books up though. They are all over $7 so I should get something out of them. Besides, maybe someday I'll actually open that bookstore I've dreamed about and this practice will come in good stead. I'll keep telling myself this so I don't go smack my head into a wall...

Happy Thursday!